Two Guns

It has all the workings of a modern-day Hamlet – murder, madness, and supernatural superstition dotting its colorful history.

Two Guns, originally known as Canyon Lodge, started out as a modest trading post at the beginning of the 19th century, run by a couple of homesteaders by the names of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel B. Oldfield. A few more westward pioneers staked claim to the area over the years, and by the early 1920s the road through town, known as the National Trail Highway, became the preferred route across Diablo Canyon . When Earle and Louise Cundiff blew into town, they brought 320 acres of the land, making Canyon Lodge a busy stop for travelers. By the late '20s, what was once the National Trail Highway was blossoming into the famed Route 66, and the once-isolated trading post was evolving into a bustling stop for incoming drivers needing gas, food, and oil.

This quickly escalating prosperity caught the attention of a man named Harry Miller. A well-educated veteran of the Spanish-American War and an ostentatious publicist, Miller was an eccentric man who claimed to be full-blooded Apache and was known for his garish and unpleasant demeanor. Wanting a piece of the action, Harry "Two Guns" Miller allegedly struck a deal with the Cundiffs to lease a business site for ten years.

Under Miller's watch, the trading post was renamed Two Guns and turned into a full-blown tourist trap. He grew out his hair and braided it, taking on a persona by the name of Chief Crazy Thunder. He started a zoo with chicken-wire cages that held mountain lions and other native Arizona animals and started tours down into a canyon cave now called Apache Death Cave , where 42 Apache men met their death in battle.

The story of the cave was interesting in its own right, but Miller believed that the tale needed something more. He cleaned up the remaining bones he found in the cave, built fake ruins, and repurposed the tomb into a “cave dwelling.” In a macabre commercial stroke of genius, he saved the skulls of the ill-fated Apache and sold them as souvenirs. In order to make the cave a bit more tourist-friendly, he also strung up some electric lighting, threw in a soda stand, and renamed the death cave the “Mystery Cave.”

It was around this time that people say the curse of Two Guns began.